The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | Page 7

censure, how just must be your apprehension of your
character falling into my hands; since what would not a man have
reason to dread, if attacked by an author who had received from him
injuries equal to my obligations to you!
And will not this dread of censure increase in proportion to the matter
which a man is conscious of having afforded for it? If his whole life,
for instance, should have been one continued subject of satire, he may
well tremble when an incensed satirist takes him in hand. Now, sir, if
we apply this to your modest aversion to panegyric, how reasonable
will your fears of me appear!
Yet surely you might have gratified my ambition, from this single
confidence, that I shall always prefer the indulgence of your
inclinations to the satisfaction of my own. A very strong instance of
which I shall give you in this address, in which I am determined to
follow the example of all other dedicators, and will consider not what
my patron really deserves to have written, but what he will be best
pleased to read.
Without further preface then, I here present you with the labours of
some years of my life. What merit these labours have is already known
to yourself. If, from your favourable judgment, I have conceived some
esteem for them, it cannot be imputed to vanity; since I should have
agreed as implicitly to your opinion, had it been given in favour of any
other man's production. Negatively, at least, I may be allowed to say,
that had I been sensible of any great demerit in the work, you are the
last person to whose protection I would have ventured to recommend it.

From the name of my patron, indeed, I hope my reader will be
convinced, at his very entrance on this work, that he will find in the
whole course of it nothing prejudicial to the cause of religion and virtue,
nothing inconsistent with the strictest rules of decency, nor which can
offend even the chastest eye in the perusal. On the contrary, I declare,
that to recommend goodness and innocence hath been my sincere
endeavour in this history. This honest purpose you have been pleased to
think I have attained: and to say the truth, it is likeliest to be attained in
books of this kind; for an example is a kind of picture, in which virtue
becomes, as it were, an object of sight, and strikes us with an idea of
that loveliness, which Plato asserts there is in her naked charms.
Besides displaying that beauty of virtue which may attract the
admiration of mankind, I have attempted to engage a stronger motive to
human action in her favour, by convincing men, that their true interest
directs them to a pursuit of her. For this purpose I have shown that no
acquisitions of guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward
comfort of mind, which is the sure companion of innocence and virtue;
nor can in the least balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in
their room, guilt introduces into our bosoms. And again, that as these
acquisitions are in themselves generally worthless, so are the means to
attain them not only base and infamous, but at best incertain, and
always full of danger. Lastly, I have endeavoured strongly to inculcate,
that virtue and innocence can scarce ever be injured but by indiscretion;
and that it is this alone which often betrays them into the snares that
deceit and villainy spread for them. A moral which I have the more
industriously laboured, as the teaching it is, of all others, the likeliest to
be attended with success; since, I believe, it is much easier to make
good men wise, than to make bad men good.
For these purposes I have employed all the wit and humour of which I
am master in the following history; wherein I have endeavoured to
laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices. How far I have
succeeded in this good attempt, I shall submit to the candid reader, with
only two requests: First, that he will not expect to find perfection in this
work; and Secondly, that he will excuse some parts of it, if they fall
short of that little merit which I hope may appear in others.

I will detain you, sir, no longer. Indeed I have run into a preface, while
I professed to write a dedication. But how can it be otherwise? I dare
not praise you; and the only means I know of to avoid it, when you are
in my thoughts, are either to be entirely silent, or to turn my thoughts to
some other subject.
Pardon, therefore, what I have said in this epistle, not only